If you are reading this, then you know how much Girl Scouts love arts and crafts! I am still doing Try Its with my girls, and one that they loved to earn was the Brownie Girl Scout Art to Wear Try It. Here is how we did it….
I takes four activities to earn a Try It, and the girls earned the Art to Wear Try It in two sessions. For the first session, they decorated foam visors with rhinestones and glitter glue. I told the girls that with wearable art, less is more! (That required some explaining to my third grade Brownies).
Once they were done, I set them aside on a separate table with newspaper. We are going to use these for our nature walk field trip in the spring!
The next activity was to design tee shirts. I chose the color green because we are bridging to Juniors in May. I wanted the girls to have an option to wear a white tee shirt or green one for our next scouting year. I bought all of the shirts in sizes 14-16, because cotton shrinks and the girls are going to grow.
For Daisy Girl Scouts bridging to Brownies, you might want to consider having your girls make tee shirts in yellow, white or beige to wear during their meetings.
Before I let the girls use fabric paint, I had them make a design on scrap paper. We talked about how you need to think about your design before you actually put it on a shirt with permanent fabric paint!
Once the design was checked by myself or my co-leader, we spread the girls out to separate tables, three per table. I gave them a quick lesson on fabric painting…how to get the air bubbles out (tap it on the table a few times and squeeze on a piece of scrap paper to make sure it does not burp up a blob of paint).
It is important to keep checking the girls to make sure that they are staying on task and that they are not emptying entire tubes of paint onto one area of their shirt. While the girls did fine, I think an extra set of eyes may have prevented this from happening on a few shirts.
The finished products came out fantastic!
At the end of the meeting, I realized I had a big glitch…how were the girls going to carry a big wet tee shirt and wet visor? My co-leader and I walk the girls to the cars, and it was not physically possible for us to help all of the girls with their projects . Since we meet in the elementary school art room, I looked for the school principal to ask permission to keep the shirts over the weekend, but could not find her.
I made the executive decision to keep them there and return to school early Monday morning before the teachers arrived. I sent the principal an email, and she responded that all was fine.
I picked up the shirts , put them in plastic bags, and had my twins distribute them to the girls at school Monday morning.
At our next meeting, we are having a workshop with a bead maker to make bracelets and necklaces. Then we will have fulfilled all four Try It requirements for the badge.
If you want to earn the Brownie Girl Scout Art to Wear Try It badge, here is a list of items you will need:
- Shirts
- Foam Visors
- Puffy/fabric paint
- Glitter glue
You will also need:
- Cardboard to put the tee shirts on while painting (use a carton cut to size)
- Large sturdy paper plate for the girls to carry out the visors
- Newspapers to cover the tables
- Scrap paper for sketching designs
- Markers or pencils for sketching
- SMOCKS
- Figure out how the girls are getting the wet shirt to the car
Creating art to wear is a fun way to spend a Girl Scout meeting!
